Monday, May 4, 2015

Emmett Harder

As you saw on the 2015 MansonBlog Tour, we met up with Emmett Harder at Goler Wash. Here are two videos featuring this gem of a man who spent his life in the California desert. The first is a promotional video for his book, "These Canyons are Full of Ghosts". The second is a CBS2 news piece reporting on the possibility of doing digs at Barker Ranch in search of additional bodies.

Mr Harder's book is "These Canyons Are Full of Ghosts: The Last of the Death Valley Prospectors" and is available on amazon.com

And back on topic - If I regretted not being able to make the tour before, I can double that feeling now, having missed out on meeting this heroic human being with so much life in him.

Mr Humph - Haha! I'm the novice here in Mansonland, it's I who should be careful what I say! Of course, I am secretly grading everyone's grammar and the correct use of the old language, and I do report back directly to Her Majesty, but please, don't let that worry you :)

Hey Mr. Hendrickson - you are of course the man when it comes to understanding Charlie, so I thank you much for your comment on my post on Geronimo and Charlie.But to tell you the truth, and I know this is devil talk for anyone south of the Mason-Dixon line, but the historical figure I relate Manson to the most is Stonewall Jackson who was a five-star looney toon as well as being a psycho killer.See, I still think the reason Charlie refuses to accept any responsibility for TLB is that he sees it as an act of war. He in fact used those words with Diane Sawyer. Geronimo hated the gringos, Stonewall hated the damn Yankees and Charlie hated "pigs" - established American society.I suspect that Charlie loathes being lumped in with Bundy and the Night Stalker other serial killers because he doesn't see himself as a degenerate killer like those sickos.My favorite all time Manson quote is when he calls Bundy a "poop butt and a Momma's boy".Manson most likely prefers to see himself in the same room as the bloody Confederate fighters like Quantril and such. And of course some of the Old West rebel fighters as well. You know him best, RH, but I bet Charlie loves talking about Stonewall and Geronimo and others who "fought the Man". Now of course slaughtering a nine-month pregnant woman and her unborn child is not exactly "fighting the man" but it is fairly indisputable that Stonewall and Geronimo and other American Icons did the same and more.Could history see Charlie as something more than the embodiment of evil somewhere down the road?It's doubtful, but stranger things have happened.

Which begs the question - how differently would Manson and TLB have been viewed if it hadn't contained the degree of savagery that it did? But of course that was the point - Charlie expressly wanted it savage for whatever reason. But if all the victims had just been shot once or twice instead of being butchered would we even be blogging about it today? Yeah, we would. Because the times and the TLB characters were just that colorful.

According to Partridge's Dictionary of slang and unconventional english, a poop-butt is to be considered a lazy person. In a more modern context, it seems to refer to a full-of-shit-kind-of-person. One can speculate that there has been a poopifaction of the term. In the Geraldo interview, Manson refers to himself as a poopbutt. What we need to deal with is whether or not manson subscribes to the modern defition, thus considering himself as being a full-of-shit-kind-of-person. Taking into account his bakground and apparent self image, i personally believe he views the poop-butt as less full-of-shit and more feet-shuffling. I think that once we have worked out this issue, we will have unlocked the second world war.

The key impact of both crimes is that Conspiracy to Commit Murder and Felony Murder do not require the defendant to actually kill anyone or even be present when someone is murdered to be guilty of murder. That, of course, rather obviously is directed at Charles Manson.